Feeling fragile? Avoid Facebook at all costs.

For someone with very little opportunity to get out, a spare laptop and the odd fifteen minutes of free time inbetween removing sludge from high chairs and refereeing a spat over Scoop (a yellow digger to the uninitiated), Facebook might seem like the perfect opportunity to catch up on your social life. Trouble is, I'm finding my FB sessions increasingly depressing. It's a bit like those studies that feminists used to do of women's self-esteem after reading glossy magazines - looking at bite-size, cherry-picked snippets of my friends' lives makes me feel like everyone is living a much more glamorous existence than me. This may well be true but it's also a result of the fact that Facebook effectively encourages us all to do our own pr and distill our lives into the most appealing chunks. For example, as a former tv producer I know all about the sheer grind of production, yet when I see posts about my friend's new jobs I nearly always just feel jealous of their fascinating new project, not relieved that it's not me that'll be working 'till midnight five days on the trot. As I almost never post myself, I'd say I'm more of a FB stalker than a proper user but if I did constantly update my status there's almost no way I could avoid looking like a tedious smug mum. It would be all, 'look at the boy's tickling each other, aren't they cute'. Maybe we should dedicate a FB day to tedium - everyone could chronicle the dullest task in their day and thereby make everyone else feel that their life is actually quite exciting in comparison.

Have you gone back to work yet?

No, no, no and mostly when people ask me this I feel like a total slacker / dullard / betrayer of decades of feminist struggle. Am I to blame if the Pankhursts are turning in their graves? Quite a few of my friends who've worked hard for good careers take the line that women should go back to work or we might as well live under the Taliban. The problem is who then looks after the children? Well, in general it's other women, just poorer ones, usually from Eastern Europe or the Philippines, so I'm not sure this is a great feminist triumph. Ultimately, most mums I know (and quite a few dads) would like to work part-time but this hasn't been an option for me as my old career is not what you'd call child-friendly. Now I'm in that tedious situation of trying to work out what I can do that would fit around spending lots of time with my gorgeous boys and would still be mentally stimulating, use my skills, pay filthy amounts of cash etc. etc. Any ideas?!